A couple of notable letters crop up on the wall. They are correspondence from Lord Nelson and nestle among the high-value art in the Royal Yacht Squadron ‘Castle’, in Cowes, Isle of Wight.The handwriting looked fine to me, a nice round hand.Said James, steward of the place, where he has worked, other than for a brief spell elsewhere, since he was 16, with a degree of understatement: ‘There is a reason it is not quite as legible as it might have been.‘By this stage, the Admiral was no longer able to write with his stronger arm.’So, we are at the very citadel of sailing, a place built with eight-feet deeper walls on the land side than on the waterfront. ‘The French would have known better than to have approached us by sea,’ was the thrust of James’s non-negotiable reasoning.He was wearing a black tie. All staff and some 540 members of the Royal Yacht Squadron wear the same neckwear along with their dark blazers. They are in mourning. Sir Ben Ainslie is looking to help end Britain’s long wait for America’s Cup gloryFor it is merely 200 years since Admiral Nelson left us, aged 47, aboard Britain’s flagship HMS Victory, shot by a French sniper during the Battle of Trafalgar off the coast of Spain. Dead but victorious.Which sort of brings us to today, and Sir Ben Ainslie’s attempt, now as team boss rather than helmsman, to win the technology-led, F1-on-water America’s Cup, the oldest international sports competition in the world dating back to 1851, when it is next held in Naples next year. We have famously never won it.Ainslie was made an honorary member of the Squadron (you can’t apply, chaps or chapesses), under whose banner the British attempt fights, soon after winning his fourth Olympic Gold medal at London 2012, before being elevated to full membership three years ago.There is a major departure in his latest attempt, however, in the male-dominated Royal Yacht Squadron. Jemima Lines, 29, a kitefoiler and adventurer, is enlisted to become a participating member of the on-board team of five, and thus the first woman to participate in the Cup since aviation pioneer Sir Thomas Sopwith’s wife Phyllis in 1934 and 1937.Lines was given the role for her exceptional background, one entirely in keeping with the traditions of the event. For one thing, she is the fourth daughter of a special forces soldier, born in Kent and educated at Bristol University as an engineer. Her father was Ralph Crathorne, who died earlier this year, aged 67, in a mountaineering accident in Scotland.‘I owe so much to him and how I see everything in life,’ she said during Cowes Week, only a few weeks after getting married. ‘Everything I have achieved is down to his influence. He wanted us to explore everything in the world, and I am pleased to be doing this as a result.‘We’d often be late for school because my father had taken us all to the beach and we’d be kiting, that was from the age of eight, and he always wanted us to do bigger adventures. This is the biggest change I have ever made, to be involved in the America’s Cup.’Ainslie, as ever, had a busy week in Cowes, being his sport’s most celebrated figure. A day earlier he had welcomed Anne, Princess Royal, as the new Admiral of the Yacht Squadron, in succession to her father, the late Duke of Edinburgh. She is a loyal supporter of the old cause. Ainslie’s wife Georgie (left) is his stalwart supporter in his ambition, now as team bossAinslie is now sipping a restorative drink and eating sandwiches on the Royal Yacht Squadron terrace after sailing competitively for the first time since the last America’s Cup in Barcelona a couple of years ago. He is doing his best to pretend it is not the case, but his 49-year-old body has been given a decent examination out on the water.He is off next to the annual Squadron Ball later, along with wife Georgie (née Thompson), previously of Sky Sports News, his stalwart supporter.Sitting close to where the America’s Cup began under the gaze of Queen Victoria, Ainslie said: ‘I’m confident we can win the Cup in the end. You know how it is with our maritime history. We have to do it.’Handwriting, good, bad or indifferent, it is a story that would earn its place on the Castle wall.